Monday, February 27, 2012

content

this blog is badass.

urban sketchers blog

                                             this is what caught my eye on there...what skills...

it shows a lovely account of some serious modern artists creating a creative visual account of those sweet urban vistas.


so anyways, i will be sharing my generalization-laden take on what the  content of sketchbooks, or at least what i've gathered so far. the best part of this is that sketchbooking is such a FREE art form that 'generalizing' is unavoidable.

-content involves representational or abstracted studies
-common materials include pen, pencil, and watercolor
-collage
-dates and locations
-landscapes, still-lifes, doodles, caricatures.
-text

i need to vastly elaborate when i am not so brain-dead.




academic travel sketchbook

one of the links i had posted earlier led me on a little research trail on joseph mallord william turner, the late 18th, early 19th landscape painter who worked in sketchbooks his whole life. these are documented in this very hard-to-navigate website where you can browse through his sketches: turner sketchbooks.

the website had great potential but it was frustratingly difficult to go from one page to the next. too much clicking.

but from what i gathered, Turner's sketchbook activity seemed to be hanging around the academic realm of things. he had sketches from events he witnessed and places he traveled to as well as preliminary sketches for future works of art. the kind of serious sketchbook your professor wants you to keep in an academic drawing or painting class. strictly business.

this is also a good example of a "travel sketchbook" where foreign vistas are documented through quick sketches. pre-camera.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

hit the jackpot: massive sketchbook collection online

there are so many sketchbooks to browse online these days! this is so inspiring, i wish there was a magazine like that that just showed images from people's sketchbooks.

artist's sketchbooks

i am going to look at fine artists sketchbooks and hipster sketchbooks. i can only come up with two categories at the moment. give me time. more research and i'll revise that.


Thursday, February 16, 2012

how it all started....A.K.A. my sketchbook 'awakening'

coming from a family of artists, the idea of keeping a sketchbook was suggested to me from a very young age, but sadly, i wasn't able to bring myself to commit to anything cover to cover until it was posed as a school assignment. (hey, you know, sometimes you need a little bit of academic pressure to get things done!) so, in my sophomore year of high school, i was given a sketchbook in my art class to fill cover to cover during the semester. the key success here was the informality. my instructors presented the project informally and gave us very few guidelines to leave room for freedom of creativity.  that, in my opinion, was the most important part, since

SKETCHBOOKS ARE THE PRIME FRONTIER FOR EXPERIMENTATION.

this came to me as i was browsing over this article (the sketchbook-the creative diary) that gives a brief overview on the art of keeping a sketchbook. i jotted down a quick list of the 'pros' of sketchbooking and how they were applicable to my experience. most importantly, i noted the informality of a sketchbook, which takes off the pressure of 'having to create a work of art' and makes room for experimenting on a small scale. sketching, watercolor, writing, collage, photos, found objects, etc. i got so hooked on that sketchbook project, i've been keeping one ever since.

Here is my CURRENT sketchbook.



Here are some excerpts out of my current sketchbook, we're talking cartoons, fashion sketches, studies, quotes, and found objects.










Thursday, February 9, 2012

clean&fun

i landed upon this extensive collection of sketchbook illustrations by the artist Irina Vinnik while using stumbleupon a while ago. they were featured on the Behance Network webpage, here is a link: Irina Vinnik on Behance Network. i was drawn to her work for its intense detail, i was struck by how insanely clean they are while still seeming spontaneous and fun. this is especially impressive when the majority of my sketchbook pages have coffee stains on them! 

Thursday, February 2, 2012

last year's inspiring sketchbook discovery

Last spring i found this website: travelingjournal while on stumble-upon, and was so intrigued by the idea of a collaborative traveling art piece. i liked that this combined a wide range of artistic styles and mediums, which in my opinion, are crucial to visually-appealing, dynamic sketchbooks!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

GREETINGS!

Welcome to my sketchbook research blog, where i will be documenting my journey into the world of sketch-booking activity!

on this blog, i will be posting links, photos and information i find during this semester of sketchbook-genre research!

like all my other research projects, my first stop is good old trustee (?) Wikipedia!Wikisketchbook